Creation
An Order of Reality Worth Giving Our Lives To – Br. Keith Nelson
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Br. Keith Nelson
The Sunday of the Transfiguration: The Last Sunday after the Epiphany
At its heart, the Feast of the Transfiguration is about the revelation of who God is in and through Jesus Christ – and who God is in and through Christ’s followers, as we are transfigured by this life-changing relationship of love.
But the transfiguration account we just heard, and its counterparts in Luke and Mark, are all preceded by a stark prediction, by Jesus, of his violent death. And in all three, this prediction is followed by an equally stark condition of discipleship: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). Luke adds, “every day.”
So while the mountaintop vision reveals Jesus, shining like the sun as he speaks face to face with the ancestors Moses and Elijah, they speak of his coming death. Read More
Saint Francis of Assisi, Patron Saint of Ecology – Br. David Vryhof
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Br. David Vryhof
Francis of Assisi
Today we remember Francis, the little poor man of Assisi. There is a lot about him that is worth remembering.
Saint Francis was fascinated by the poverty of Christ – his lowly birth in Bethlehem, his inauspicious upbringing in Nazareth, his wanderings through Galilee and Judea as an itinerant preacher and healer, his terrible suffering on the Cross. He sought to imitate that poverty in his own life, forsaking his family’s wealth to embrace a life of simplicity and suffering. Like Christ, he was drawn to the poor, the sick and the outcasts, and overcoming his initial repulsion, chose to live and work among them.
We remember today his boundless love for God and for God’s Church. He frequently wept at the sight of a crucifix and spent hours and even days in prayer. He was a charismatic preacher and many chose to follow him. Thousands joined the religious orders he founded: friars and nuns and lay people embraced his message and his values. He was a peacemaker, a reconciler, a lover of all. Read More
The Means of Grace and Hope of Glory – Br. James Koester
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Br. James Koester
The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 18C)
You may have heard that recently the Pope predicted that AI would be the next industrial revolution. At the same time, he called upon the Roman Catholic Church to apply its social teachings regarding human dignity, justice, and labour to this new AI industrial revolution as it has done consistently since a previous Pope Leo issued an encyclical entitled On Capital and Labour in 1891. That earlier Pope Leo laid the foundation for modern Roman Catholic social teaching that has endured for more than a century, and which includes Pope Francis’ encyclical On Care for Our Common Home.
If the Pope is correct, and many believe he is, then this would be the fourth industrial revolution the world has experienced since the eighteenth century, and the third since the late nineteenth century. These revolutions have seen the world shift from hand tools to steam, from steam to electricity, from electricity to the digital age, and now from the digital age to the age of AI. Underpinning these industrial revolutions were first the scientific revolution of the sixteenth century and the enlightenment of the seventeenth century. Each of these revolutions has resulted in a shift in our relationships, both with one another as humans, and equally significant, in our relationship with the rest of creation.
An Ever-Widening & Expanding Circle – Br. Keith Nelson
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Ephphatha. Jesus looked up, breathed out, and said: Be opened.
And the man was opened: brought back from a closed-off place where no words could get in and no meaning could get out. Let through to a wide-open place of many possibilities, where moments before there had been few, and life was merely survival.
How wide can one human heart be opened to the life of God?
This gradual opening of the heart in an ever-expanding trajectory marks the entire arc of Jesus’ life, words, and actions among us. He stood at the center of an ever-widening and expanding circle of relationships. His gospel shows the way toward an ever-widening and expanding circle of participation in the life of the kingdom: the astonishing reality that we are called to direct participation in the inmost life of God.
This is the heart of Jesus. Read More
Arise, My Love, My Fair One, and Come Away – Br. James Koester
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Br. James Koester,
Superior
There is a lot going on today. It’s the Sunday of the Labour Day weekend, a holiday marking the social, economic and political achievements of the labour movement. (As an aside, in the Nineteenth Century, our own Father Field was a great proponent of the move to implement a 5 ½ day work week for child labourers. He created a half-day fund, and each Saturday would take as many boys as he could find, sometimes in the range of over 200, out into the country for an afternoon of games and a picnic, bringing them back to the city in the evening tired, well fed, and happy.) Today is also the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, sometimes known as the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity. Over this is laid the first Sunday in the Season of Creation, when many parishes, including us, focus their attention on the beauty and wonder of creation, and our need to protect its integrity. Closer to home, I stand before you in the last moments as my time as Superior. Later this morning we will install our brother Keith as our new Superior.
All around us, different things are happening, and it’s hard to know where to look, where to focus. Some things are ending, while others are just beginning. Still others are in mid-course. What is true for the monastery and the church, is no doubt true in your own lives. It is certainly true for the world. So much seems to be changing all at the same time, with some things coming to an end, or even dying, while others are just beginning, and coming to life. Still others are somewhere in between. Read More
God’s Majesty to be Praised – Br. Curtis Almquist
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Isaiah 11:1-10
The Euclid Telescope made news just several weeks ago. You may have seen in the media an astonishing sample of photos from this new robotic telescope, launched in July, and which is mapping the “extragalactic sky.” [i] I find most striking a photo of what is being called the “Horsehead Nebula,” an equine-shaped cloud with baby stars. It is many light years away: 1,375 light years away from us. One light year is almost 6 trillion miles from earth. This “Horsehead Nebula” we can now see is 1,375 x 6 trillion miles away from us.[ii]
If I sound as if I know what I am talking about, I do not. I know virtually nothing about the science of astronomy. I am a reader, and an awestruck observer, as you may be also. This interstellar experience of the vastness of God’s creation is the very thing we read about in the Psalms. The psalmist writes about the God, the Creator:
“Your majesty is praised in the heavens…
When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars you have set in their courses,
who are we that you should be mindful of us…?”[iii]
Who are we? We are among those whom the scriptures call “children of God” who have lived the generations of time before us and who, in God’s mercy, may live generations of time beyond us. This is what God has had in mind since the dawn of creation: we come from God, and we belong to God, and we have captured God’s desire to share life in eternity with us. All of us, all God’s creatures. Read More
Be a Blessing – Br. Luke Ditewig
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Br. Luke Ditewig
Genesis 12:1-9
Philippians 2:1-13
Today the last Sunday in the Season of Creation, celebrating with the Church ecumenical and concluding on Wednesday with St. Francis. Our theme this morning is bless. “God bless you” is a simple or serious request. When we bless with words, we ask for God’s provision, favor, kindness, goodness to be evident. To bless is to pray for others, to intercede and act on behalf of others. We pray not to inform God of needs but we Brothers speak of in our Rule of Life, to join God in loving solidarity which God uses “for healing and transformation.”[i] God is not dependent on us. God invites our loving action including prayer.
God instructed Moses and Aaron to say: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.”[ii] When another’s face lights up at seeing ours, we feel loved. In other words: “May God be good to you and protect you. May God turn toward you. May God’s face light up at seeing you. May you feel the love and receive peace or wholeness.” Read More
Welcome Fall – Br. Luke Ditewig
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Br. Luke Ditewig
Ember Day
Exodus 19:3-8
Matthew 16:24-27
Welcome to Fall! Last night was the Autumn Equinox when day and night were almost the same amount of time. The earth’s axis and the sun’s orbit lined up given both hemispheres an equal about of light. The weather here has cooled, and the humidity dropped. Leaves are just beginning to turn color. Soon the brilliance will unfurl as leaves prepare to let go.
Today we pray for all Christians in our common vocation of following Jesus. “Deny yourself and take up your cross,” Jesus says. Surrender. Let go of pride, ambition, faults, fears and seeking self-sufficiency. “Follow me; trust me,” Jesus says. “I am your Savior.” We often fear, flee, or fight, but what if we fall into following? That may sound impossible especially when life and grief overwhelm. Jesus crucified, risen, and ascended bears all our weight, indeed all of creation. Surrender is trusting Jesus with everything. Read More
Why Ember Days – Br. James Koester
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Ember Friday
We find ourselves today, on the second of three days, when we are invited to pray specifically for the ministry of the church, and those engaged in it. So, on one day we pray for those to be ordained; on the second, for the choice of suitable persons for the ministry; and on the third, for all Christians in their vocations. Historically these are called Ember Days, and they happen four times a year: in Advent, Lent, just after Trinity Sunday, and in the middle of September.
While today these Ember Days are associated with prayer for the ministry of the church, it was not always so. Liturgical scholars believe their placement in the four quarters or cycles of the year, or quatuor tempora, in Latin, or ymbren ryne in Anglo-Saxon, which is where our word ember comes from, is no accident. It is thought that originally these days were associated with the agricultural cycle of the year: spring, summer, fall, and winter. If that is the case, the origin of Ember Days predates the history of the church, and prayers for ministry, and reaches back to our pre-Christian, agricultural forebears. Read More
If You Listen: Rejoining the Earth Community – Br. Keith Nelson
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Second Sunday in Season of Creation
Ezekiel 33:7-11
Matthew 18:15-20
Today we continue with the second in a five-part preaching series for the church’s Season of Creation. The theme this week is “Learn.” As many of you will know I spent six-weeks this summer learning from and collaborating with Navajo Episcopalians. I learned so much, and I’d like to begin by sharing one of my experiences.
I was driving a rental pickup truck along the winding, narrow highway that snakes its way through Monument Valley, Arizona, but I returned the gaze of the woman in my passenger seat at every moment I could. It was urgent that I do so, because her eyes shone with the sorrow and righteous anger of generations. She gestured all around us at the sunbeaten landscape of rock and endless horizon that she called home: Dinétah, the Navajo Nation. Though nothing appeared unusual to the naked eye, she told me how this iconic region contains 63 abandoned uranium mines. This is only a fraction of the total number in Navajoland, over 500. Beginning in the 1950’s private, white-owned companies hired primarily Navajo workers to extract this radioactive element for nuclear weapons. Increasing rates of cancer afflicted Navajo people at alarming speed throughout the sixties. Though studied and documented, nothing was done to protect Navajo people. In spite of the founding and intervention of the EPA in 1971, to this day large amounts of radioactive waste remain – in the earth, the air, and in vital aquifers. As she listed the lives of family and friends cut short or diminished by radiated lungs and failed kidneys, my companion’s tears spilled over and her voice trembled as she asked, “Why do they do this to us?” Read More